Several months later…
…The actress who was at the directing workshop I did with Herbie Wise writes back to me. She’s been working solidly and has finally read her emails and found the script for Strawberries and she liked it. Did I make it? I write back: no, I made The Car. Strawberries still sits there, a personal project. I’ve something to say, personally, with it. Things to explore. I think it needs more humour, more comedy, more levity and joy to function the way I want it to function. It sits. It waits.

****

Several months later…
…After my friend Jelena said I must decorate my kitchen and after my helpful buddies, Lucy and Pete, picked at the wall tiles which then fell off and after I stuck them back on with white camera tape. I bit the bullet and sucked on some lead which addled my brain. No, not really. Really I pulled off the old tiles and bought small white mosaic blocks. I replaced all the worktops (sic) and I painted the walls, pale grey. I’m repainting the gloss white woodwork, retiling the floor and putting up a splashback around all the work surfaces.

Now… the cooker which is old and falling apart looks out of place. It’s shades of brown and must be a health hazard. I need a cooker hood with an extractor so the room doesn’t get gunked with a thin layer of oil when I fry. These are good excuses to buy a new cooker and a hood, aren’t they? I think so.

****

Several months later…
…Since I had the soles of my boots replaced and they started falling off again, I went into a real cowboy boot store in the Mid West and bought a pair of good boots. Not all fancy big cowboy boots, mind, but good soft leather with some tread on the soles. The owner had pictures of him on the wall hanging out with his rodeo buddies, guys who ride bulls. He told me my size by looking at my feet and then handed me my boots. “These are what you want.” They fit, they look good, they’re hardwearing. No bull. I didn’t tell him that they were actually cheaper than my old boots.

Now… I probably can’t afford a new cooker, let alone an extractor. So it would be best if I didn’t fry stuff for a while. But I can walk around a lot with no worries so that’s okay.

****

Next… There were a whole bunch of thoughts hanging almost within grasp that I wanted to pluck out of the air and write about. Thoughts about politics and grass roots involvement and how democracy would be a whole lot better if the people involved weren’t career politicians or affiliated to a party. Thoughts about how money plays too big a role in electioneering and how some kind of random selection process, like jury service, might make a better system.

And that leads me to or flows from thoughts about how representation needs to mean what it says and how politics ends up trying to get re-involved in the minutae of people’s lives–where it has no place–because the so-called representatives weren’t really involved with the public in the first place. Or something like that.

Tomorrow. Perhaps. Or maybe that was it, just there, and tomorrow would be a good day to discuss the typographical joy of the Victor logo on mousetraps, where the inside of the red V is made to look like a small rodent’s head. Not so much fun when you’re chucking out the carcasses though. Like painting a cute name on the side of a bomb.